My job often has me walking down hospital hallways. Today it was at St Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ypsilanti where a parishioner is recovering from pneumonia. Last week he slept as I sat in the room and worried about him, but today he met me with a smile. He explained a procedure I didn’t understand. Medical information seldom sticks in my brain. Enough to say he is doing better. I pulled up a chair, and we talked for a bit. I read Psalm 86 — an apt scripture for folks in the hospital — and offered a prayer for his continued healing.

Afterward, I drove to the Glacier Hills Care Facility to visit a parishioner recovering from knee surgery. She will go home tomorrow. During the visit, a man from a medical supply company delivered a walker and cane for her trip back to Adrian. She wanted to keep the cane she had used during her weeks in rehab, but he told her his company didn’t stock that kind. She had spent a lot of time walking the hallways with that cane and had grown accustomed to its feel. The cane he left with her looked sturdy enough, but its handle wasn’t as well padded as the one she had. It seems to me if a cane has helped you walk again, you should be allowed to keep it. She plans to check out the canes at Wheelock Pharmacy.

I went home via Carpenter Road (less stressful than the freeway), thinking about the scripture “We walk by faith, not by sight.” I wondered what canes help us walk by faith, and if it matters whether you have the right one, the one that feels right in your hand.